Posts Tagged terrorism

Anita Sarkeesianof Feminist Frequency was scheduled to give a talk at Utah State University tonight. But she was forced to cancel after someone threatened to commit “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if the event went forward and the state’s conceal-and-carry law prevented the police from taking adequate security measures to address the threat.

Words are, as ever, but the meanest of replies to the enormous significance of a tragedy like that which befell three innocent people in Kansas this week. Not only for the crime itself, but also for the miles-deep social cancer that it is a spasmodic symptom of. We are reminded, of course, that anti-Semitism remains thrumming beneath the pulse of our society, and it is terrifyingly far from the ash-heap of history.

As I think of my Jewish loved ones, I also think of how my own fate as a Latina trans woman is inextricably yoked to theirs, and how Frazier Glenn Miller’s bullets could easily have targeted me instead.

The incomprehensible violence that took place on 9/11 almost 11 years ago scarred us all. It has impacted the psyche of everyone in the US so much that politicians have been able to use “terrorism” as justification for actions that step far outside the realm of conscience or constitutionality (none of this was new post-9/11, but we certainly saw an escalation and re-commitment to terrorism as the justification with all the “War on Terror” rhetoric).

But while we don’t always talk about it in this language, that was not the last act of terrorism to happen in the US. In the past 11 years we’ve seen a spike in violence against the Sikh community. There was a wave of attacks ...

The incomprehensible violence that took place on 9/11 almost 11 years ago scarred us all. It has impacted the psyche of everyone in the US so much that politicians have been able to use “terrorism” as justification ...

As in, he joined the growing list of extreme anti-choice domestic terrorists who bomb, shoot, and act with intent to kill, sometimes succesffully, in the name of their “pro-life” cause.

In this case, the explosion didn’t kill anyone. It started a fire that caused a small amount of damage to the building. But that doesn’t change what this was. This this was no single act of failed mischief. This was not the exception, and Grady is not some extremist lone wolf. As Chloe put it when we first reported the story earlier this week, we need to call this what is is: ...

Ten days after the attacks of September 11, in Texas, Mark Anthony Stroman shot three people, killing two of them. The third, a man named Rais Bhuiyan, survived, but with grave injuries. Now, Stroman is on death row and his execution is just weeks away, and Bhuiyan is working to secure his reprieve from the death penalty.

The New York Times interviewed Bhuiyan by phone, and Stroman by letter. The result is some of the most heart-wrenching description of violence and forgiveness I’ve ever come across.